The Telegraph Cinema hosted a screening of A Return to Adriaport, a 2013 film by Adela Babanová. The screening was part of the European Heritage Days event and the film is part of the Robert Runták Collection
The 2012 Jindřich Chalupecký Award finalist Adéla Babanová is one of the most prominent Czech artists working on the borderline between short film and video art, in which she originally combines both approaches. Originally she was a photographer, but during her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague she turned to video under the guidance of Miloš Šejn. She went on to study under Vladimír Kokola and later Michal Bielický, who is a pioneer of Czech video art. Since 2006, she has been working closely with her brother and screenwriter Džian Baban, a graduate of FAMU. Their joint work is characterised by professional film processing, which is not common in the Czech context of video art. In her work, Babanová combines imagination with personal experience and history from the very beginning. She often focuses on forgotten historical events, which she treats with an emphasis on mystification and blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction. She applied this method in A Return to Adriaport, which was featured in the Telegraph.
The film is about an unrealised tunnel project that was supposed to lead from České Budějovice to the Adriatic coast. Czech economist Karel Žlábek came up with the idea in 1968. The excavated material was to be used to create an artificial island called Adriaport, which would become a Czechoslovak port in the middle of the sea. This project, which never crossed the boundaries of utopia, comes to life thanks to the artist, who asks how it could all turn out in an alternative reality.
Among the artist's other major films is Neptune from 2018, which responds to a real-life disinformation scandal from the 1960s known as Action Neptune. At the time, the State Security staged the discovery of Nazi crates containing forged and carefully staged Nazi documents on Black Lake in the Bohemian Forest to create an international media sensation. The aim was to discredit West German politicians and to push for the extension of the Nazis' criminal liability. The true background of the whole operation was only revealed after his emigration in 1968 by former agent Ladislav Bittman. In this film, Babanová thematises manipulation and the power of the image in the context of modern history.
Another film worth mentioning is Where Did the Stewardess Fall From? In it, the author develops a fictional interview with Vesna Vulović, a Yugoslav stewardess who survived a plane crash near Česká Kamenice in the 1970s. She was the only survivor of the entire crew, and her fall from 10,000 metres is still recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. The film takes place in a hospital room where Vesna talks to a doctor and an investigator while she tries to piece her memory back together. The conversation, however, gradually turns into a subtle manipulation of a person who, without her own memory, must accept the reality constructed by others.
The screening at Telegraph Cinema thus offered the audience not only an encounter with the work of one of the most important Czech video artists, but also an opportunity to reflect on how history and memory can be reflected and manipulated through film and the moving image.
